So let’s get this straight…Malaysia and Indonesia refuse to take these Muslim refugees so they’re sending them all the way to the U.S. Does anyone else see how twisted this is? Is anyone else sick of America being the dumping ground for pretty much anyone and everyone around the globe? They must not know that we’re 19 TRILLION dollars in debt! WE CANNOT AFFORD TO DO THIS BUT GUESS WHAT…

24 Rohingya (Burmese) Muslims are on the way to the US, but the article tells us that since right after 911 we have admitted 13,000 Burmese Muslims (how many are Rohingya?).

Pol Gen Adul Sangsingkeo (right) Minister of Social Development and Human Security, prayed Thursday with 24 Rohingya human trafficking victims at a welfare centre in Pathum Thani. The migrants will travel to the U.S. for resettlement next week.

At 46 years old, Basamai, an ethnic Rohingya Muslim man, will for the first time obtain identity documents that will allow him to resettle in the United States next week, along with 23 other trafficking victims.

The 24 to be resettled follow four who left Thailand earlier this month, in a humanitarian program that has resettled 13,000 Muslims from Myanmar since 2002, according to the US Department of State Refugee Processing Center.

Following their arrival in the US — the exact location remains unknown — the Rohingya group will undergo Cultural Orientation Training before they can be resettled, said a source from the Ministry. Cultural Orientation Training, here? in the US? That is a new one on me. They were screened by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and the star of this story hopes to bring his wife and 8 daughters to America real soon! READ MORE: RRW

MUSLIM BOATPEOPLE COMING TO AMERICA

Malaysia ordered search and rescue missions Thursday for thousands of boatpeople stranded at sea, as Myanmar hosted talks with US and Southeast Asian envoys on the migrant exodus from its shores.

The rescue order, which is the first proactive official move to save the thousands of persecuted Muslim Rohingya and Bangladeshi economic migrants believed currently to be adrift, comes a day after Malaysia and Indonesia said they would end a policy of turning away boats.

As the migrant crisis has unfolded in the past few days, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand have been heavily criticised for refusing to take in boats overloaded with exhausted passengers fleeing poverty or persecution.

But on Wednesday, Malaysia and Indonesia relented, announcing their nations would accept boatpeople for one year, or until they can be resettled or repatriated with the help of international agencies.

Thailand has declined to take in boatpeople but vowed not to push them away, and on Thursday Thai junta chief Prayut Chan-O-Cha lashed out at critics of that stance by saying detractors could “migrate” to sea themselves, or take migrants into their own homes.
The Thai leader said his country was already home to more than 900,000 refugees from decades of regional turmoil.

Malaysia and Indonesia’s policy about-turn was welcomed by the United States, which said it also stood ready to admit some of the migrants, as well as the Red Cross.

Malaysia and Indonesia’s foreign ministers met Myanmar officials in Naypyidaw for talks late Thursday, where the fate of the Rohingya people remains an incendiary issue.

Indonesia’s foreign ministry said in a statement Myanmar had agreed to “strengthen measures to prevent the irregular movement of migrants” from its territory and would also send officials from their embassy in Jakarta to visit boatpeople who had recently landed in the Aceh region.

US Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken was also due to raise the plight of the Rohingya in his meeting Thursday with Myanmar officials, including President Thein Sein, in Naypyidaw.

Members of the Muslim minority flee in droves from Myanmar each year, in an exodus that has surged following sectarian violence in 2012 pitting them against local Buddhists in the western state of Rakhine.

News of the diplomatic breakthrough from Indonesia and Malaysia was yet to trickle down to the displaced Rohingya lodged in ramshackle camps around the Myanmar state capital of Sittwe on Thursday.

Myanmar’s government refuses to recognize the stateless Rohingya as an ethnic group and insists they are illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh.

But Myanmar has confirmed it will attend a broader regional summit planned on the crisis in Bangkok on May 29, after the government this week softened its line by offering to provide humanitarian assistance.

The country also said it had began its own search and rescue operations a week ago, even before the UN expressed fears for the safety of some 2,000 people believed to be stranded on boats in its waters.

Pressure is building for greater action, however, with EU lawmakers passing a resolution Thursday saying Myanmar “must change policy and end the persecution and discrimination” of its Rohingya.

Nearly 3,000 migrants have swum to shore or been rescued off the coastlines of the three countries over the past 10 days after a Thai crackdown on human-trafficking threw the illicit trade into chaos.

Malaysian foreign minister Anifah Aman said his intelligence services estimated that about 7,000 people were still adrift in the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea.

The United States, Philippines and even the west African nation of Gambia have offered assistance or possible resettlement of Rohingya, evoking memories of an exodus of hundreds of thousands of boatpeople from Vietnam in the late 1970s.